Jeffrey Fisher, who directs the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, outside the high court in 2008. / Tim Sloan, AFP

by Richard Wolf, USA TODAY

by Richard Wolf, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON - David Riley didn't make the best choices in 2009 by driving his Lexus with expired tags, a suspended license, two loaded guns under the hood and a smartphone containing gang-related photos and video. The evidence led to his conviction on assault and attempted murder charges and a prison term of at least 15 years.

But when it came to his legal defense at the Supreme Court, Riley chose wisely: He accepted free help from a clinic at one of the nation's top law schools that gives students on-the-job training - at the loftiest level.

The Supreme Court's ruling Wednesday that police violated Riley's rights by rifling through his smartphone without a warrant could lop years off his prison term. For that, he has Stanford Law School's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, among others, to thank.

The rise of law school clinics over the past decade has added to the cadre of specialists who handle appellate cases and dominate the lectern at the Supreme Court each term. The clinics provide the law schools' resources and the students' research skills to criminal defendants and civil plaintiffs who more often get outgunned by high-priced litigators representing governments and corporations.

"How on earth can law students do U.S. Supreme Court cases? In a way, our students are more trained to do that than anything else," says Jeffrey Fisher, the clinic's co-director, who argued Riley's case before the high court in April. "In terms of energy and manpower, we just pour time into these cases."

During the term ending this month, students from Stanford, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, Wake Forest and the University of California-Irvine have worked on Supreme Court cases under the direction of experienced litigators and professors.

They've defended a variety of underdogs - armed robbers and drug traffickers, military protesters and copyright claimants, victims of human rights abuse and environmental contamination. They've lost more cases than they've won, but the verdicts don't detract from the experience.

Since Stanford created the first clinic in 2004, so many schools have joined the hunt for potential Supreme Court cases that they compete annually for a slice of the pie. "It's kind of a race to see who can identify these cases," says Levi Swank, a recent University of Virginia graduate.

The Virginia and Penn clinics came out on the winning side this year. In Virginia's case, the justices ruled 7-2 that the government failed to prove a defendant knew a gun might be used during a drug deal. In Penn's case, they ruled 6-3 that a copyright challenge against the producers of the 1980 film Raging Bull can be filed decades later.

"This is really a good transition to practice," says Stephanos Bibas, who directs the Penn clinic. Unlike other ivory tower courses, he says, the students know that "there's a client riding on this, a flesh-and-blood client."

John Elwood, an appellate lawyer who works with the Virginia clinic, says the students "are young and energetic and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and haven't been crushed by the reality of being lawyers yet."

Clinics at Yale, Wake Forest and the University of California-Irvine didn't win their cases before the court, but the learning experience was invaluable.

"There's been a boom in the clinical side of law school education," says Andrew Pincus, an appellate lawyer who works with the Yale clinic. "Law schools generally are looking for more opportunities to have the real world experience of what it's like to be a lawyer."

The Stanford clinic has provided more than 50 such opportunities over the past decade in the form of Supreme Court cases. Last year, their clients included an immigrant facing deportation, a murder suspect whose silence was used to convict him, and the owner of a floating home declared a nuisance and destroyed by Florida city officials.

In the past, the clinic has brought cases to the Supreme Court on behalf of a Somali torture victim, a strip-searched prisoner, even a pit bull breeder. In 2008, it won a 5-4 ruling that states cannot impose the death penalty for the crime of child rape.

In the smartphone case, one of the clinic's most significant, the Stanford students played a key role because they understood the technology better than their professors.

Seth Lloyd, 33, took apart a replica of Riley's phone and found that photos and videos are stored on a memory card that would be preserved even if, as the state claimed, the phone's digital data could be removed remotely by the suspect.

And to counter California's contention that any digital data with a physical-world analogue should be searchable, Tess Reed, 25, found a confession app used to tally up sins. In his ruling for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts noted there are apps "for sharing prayer requests."

"The average smartphone user has installed 33 apps, which together can form a revealing montage of the user's life," Roberts wrote.

Or, as Reed says, "Cellphones have everything on them now. That would make everything searchable."